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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Suffering Dual Destinies On Mobile

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Everything is wrong in a mobile world.

We know I'm old-fashioned when it comes to technology. You hip people and your smartphones I don't own. But you know who also does not have a smartphone, and lives in the future about 13 years from now?

Phoenix Wright. This is his phone in 2027.

I think I'm in good company. Unfortunately, not many other people agree with me on my harsh anti-mobile stances. In fact, many people are happy that Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Dual Destinies is now available on Apple mobile devices. And I think it's... a terrible thing.

The majority of these so-called "apps" in the Apple Store are dirt-cheap and are crappy touch-screen-only puzzle games that you play while on the train or something for 5 minutes. They require very instant gratification because the sit-down time is so short and the attention spans so brief. I've seen it with my own eyes, these business dudes in suits who are just time-wasting on some puzzle game. These are without depth and without merit to gamers. The people who are the target audience are not people with taste. Those statistics you see about how half of gamers are women? They count the mobile gaming market. These women are not videogame fans. They're even broader a demographic and more mainstream than the Wii audience, given the prevalence of smartphones in society and the dirt-cheap barrier to entry. Remember how I said that portable systems trend to a lower-aged demographic because it's cheaper to enter the market as a consumer? That's on steroids here.

But it's not just young people buying things. What I said about ESRB and young people is absolutely true, but it also means that adults are playing E-rated games. These are the type of people who would never go into a videogame message board or a blog like KoopaTV, so I'm free to bash on them behind their backs.

Well, I have nothing against them (besides the ones who wrote those reviews of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Dual Destinies) but I do have things against mobile games being considered the wave of the future (or the present). And I do have issue with them being seen as a viable alternative to handheld gaming.

It's that poisoning that makes those impatient mobile consumers come to the ridiculous conclusion that Ace Attorney is a bad series. (We're proud to not offer Trayvon Tyson's Punch-Out!! on mobile devices, but KoopaTV being a lesser-quality experience on mobile devices than on a PC is not a result of my biases.)

I'm concerned about two things now:

Capcom (and other publishers) might eventually abandon handhelds and only release games on the mobile market. This is why people who say that Ace Attorney's appearances on mobile devices will expand the fanbase are wrong. To make up for the mismatch between Ace Attorney and the nature of mobile games, Dual Destinies is only half the price than it is on the Nintendo eShop. The only compatibility between the game and its platform is that the control scheme is simple enough. People are not going to buy a dedicated handheld system because they liked Ace Attorney on their mobile system and it's their first exposure to it. These people do not have the attention span or dedication to become long-term fans of the series. It's short-term profit with long-term detriment, just as Iwata said. This has already been a thing in non-videogame sectors. Entities make apps to post service alerts. For example, in Massachusetts, the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) has mobile apps telling you that their shitty transportation infrastructure is falling apart and your train is delayed, but their LED screens plastered all over the place in their stations don't replicate that information. It's exclusive to the mobile app.

Smartphones make their users lose all capability for critical thinking.

That second point doesn't have to do with videogames, but it's absolutely worth warning about.

People who use smartphones to run their lives forfeit the ability to think for themselves. "Hey, what decision should I make? Well, there's an app for that!" Or something. You're outsourcing your critical functions to a machine that is designed to break so you upgrade to a new one that comes out a year after the previous version is released.

Having dinner with people on their smartphone is incredibly obnoxious. They're always texting someone or looking at cat photos on the Internet. Hey, I'm trying to have a conversation here! With YOU. Quit lookin' at your phone, bub!

You know what I also hate?

These.

Wear some headphones, people. They're more comfy, have better sound quality, and don't make you look like an obnoxious kid.

Yes, I do prejudge people who walk around with those awful things in their ears. They don't aesthetically go well with anything, and you're just completely oblivious to things around you. Got a "NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!" riot going on? Hey man, I got ear buds. I'm tuning you out.

In conclusion, the absolute worst experience is some little 12 year old that got the first Dual Destinies episode for free on their iOS-enabled system (because Apple rates these, not the ESRB) because it was labeled an "editor's pick". They play with their damn ear buds pictured above for five minutes on the drive from middle school to home by their mommy, and that entire five minutes is on the opening cutscene so they do not actually play anything. They wail and drop their iOS-enabled system in frustration because they wasted that all-important five minutes of their useless lives, and the fragile thing cracks its screen. Mommy sighs, and they drive to the nearest obnoxiously-styled Apple store to buy the newer iOS-enabled system that just came out.

Absolutely awful.

“Do the Wright thing!Don't support Apple and the iPhone!Support Nintendo and the 3DS!”

Ludwig carries about his 3DS with him everywhere in hopes of Streetpassing someone, and he's quite satisfied not having a smartphone. If you would like to friend him (why would you ever do that?) his 3DS friend code is 3351-5164-3598.

23 comments
:

*sighs and shakes head* Don't lump all us mobile users into one category! :P

Once upon a time, there was a person who heard about a lawyer game. She thought a lawyer game sounded pretty dull, and didn't want to take a chance on such a dull game at its full retail price. On the other hand, it was cheap on the app store. So she got it for her iPod. It turned out to be one of the best series ever! She then went out and ordered DS copies of the rest of the series, even though some were at absurd prices back then, parodied the series as an official final project for class, recommended it to everyone she knew, and considers it one of the few instant-preorder series.

And your screenshot isn't a good measure. You can find 1-star reviews for the DS games, and those complaints look awfully similar to things I saw people say when Dual Destinies came out on 3DS. Now, if there are proportionately significantly more negative reviews for the iOS version, I'll give your argument some credence.

I don't know enough about app store rating culture to know average game ratings.

Some places have a culture of just five-starring things without thought.I'd also like to know how many of those purchases are newcomers to the franchise, how many are just Ace Attorney fans wanting to support the series, and how many will be converted to franchise fans.

I guess I'll have to compare Trilogy ratings to Dual Destinies ratings on both eShop and iOS after enough time passes.

Yes, that maybe actually be an argument in your favor--in my experience, iOS users tend to give 1-star reviews if they experience crashes. (Although to be fair, if it's a startup crash and prevents you from playing the game, maybe it's justified.)

I completely agree with your take on these games not fitting well on iOS devices. It is pitched to the wrong audience even though their intent is to expand their market. For me, I prefer these quirky kind of games like lawyer games (Phoenix Wright), surgury games (Trauma Center), etc. than main stream ones like CoD. They offer something new and more of them will be developed.

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